


Ripper gets a monologue

by Perfect_Square



Category: Star Trek, star trek discovery
Genre: I mean, M/M, Other, Rough Draft, TOS Discovery crossover, but I like what I have, incomplete work, it's just there could be more, it's pretty ok for a shit post, may or may not be abandoned, star trek prompt generator, which was the original intention, written in response to a star trek prompt generator
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-27
Updated: 2018-07-27
Packaged: 2019-06-17 07:22:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15456216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Perfect_Square/pseuds/Perfect_Square
Summary: I wrote this in response to the following prompt: "Ranting Tardigrade during Ship Evacuation with Kirk".





	1. In which the entirety of the prompt is realized, and a situation with development potential is introduced

They had flown into a tremendous fungal cloud of the Mycelium network–a naturally occurring universal hub according to the Enterprise’s chief science officer in an announcement over the PA. Also according to the same officer, the fungus had contaminated the ship wide life support system and jammed the engines. Problem was the fungus was toxic at these concentrations and it was getting thicker by the minute. Ten percent of the crew had already passed out and it was only a matter of time before everyone succumbed. 

Kirk was not even supposed to be here. He was not part of the chain of command. He did not know the enterprise’s procedures. He was a guest–between assignments on the Farragut and star fleet academy in San Francisco. Technically, he should have been on vacation, but he’d called in a favor instead–and was shadowing the engineering department. 

That said, Kirk prided himself on his adaptability. And he was still a trained star fleet not-quite-officer. So when Una, the first officer, had ordered–en lieu of the unconscious Pike–all hands to evacuate–and dispatched crews to retrieve those who had fallen unconscious, Kirk had quickly fallen in with the rescue effort. 

He joined a group of red-shirt ensigns carrying unconscious crew members to the escape pods and shuttle pads. They went from door to door checking crew quarters and carrying people off to the evacuation areas. It was rapid and efficient work. 

They’d evacuated 90% of the crew when things started to get weird. The Mycelium network was so thick at this point, that Kirk felt like he was swimming in it. And then there were Tardigrades. Huge tardigrades. Kirk recognized them from a book he’d read on the history of earth’s search for extraterrestrial life. Some were relatively small–the size of a football, and others were about the size of a horse. They floated about everywhere, like bubbles in suspension. They were relaxed and quiet, eating the mycelium. 

Kirk was spell bound for a moment watching them. The gentleness was a contrast to the blaring of the red alert and the stress of getting everyone off the ship alive. For a moment, Kirk felt the yearning–the same one he’d felt since he was a small child–to meet new civilizations, new mysteries out in the cosmos. Here, in front of him, was one such mystery.

But then someone pulled out their phaser and shot.

Kirk cursed everything. “What kind of idiot?” He leaped forward to jump between the man and the startled beast, but he was too slow. Someone else got there first.

It was a Vulcan with messy hair and eyebrows wearing the Enterprise sweater uniform. He reached out and he was touching the tardigrade–effectively stopping it.

Then the man started to speak. But it was not him talking. 

“How did they find me? No. Not again. No. They let me go. They let me go. They must have followed me here.” 

Kirk watched with growing horror as the man continued to babble.

“It’s not safe. We’re not safe. The humans want to hurt us.”

The Vulcan moaned. “You lie. You lie. They want to hurt us.”

“They found me. They trapped me. They starved me. Stabbed me. I wanted to die. I wanted to die. I escaped.”

“I killed them before they killed me.”

The Vulcan paused, “Klingons are not humans?”, and paused again.

He shook it off, “I killed them. More humans came. They trapped me again. They hurt me.”

“They hurt me. She let them hurt me. I trusted her!”

“Michael?!”

“He tortured me. I was trapped. They were killing me. It was too much. Dying. Could not take it anymore. Dying. They let me go.” 

“Must have been too used up for them. Now I’m better. They want me back.”

“I don’t believe you. Not safe. It—Ensign hurt me.”

The babbling showed no sign of stopping and Kirk stopped listening. They did not have time for this.

The ensign who fired the shot was frozen in place. Kirk dismissed him to go to the evacuation zone. And ordered him not to shoot any of the other tardigrades for good measure—substituting confidence for rank. Maybe with the ensign gone he’d be able to get a hold of the situation.

There could not be that many people left aboard, and the Vulcan could only be one person. Chief Science Officer Spock. He was the only Vulcan aboard the Enterprise while Kirk had been here.  
Improvising, Kirk tapped a nearby comm. button and requested communication with the evacuation zones. “Status?” He asked simply. They knew what he was asking for, and rank did not matter in a situation like this. 

“97 percent of personnel and guests evacuated. Waiting on 15 individuals. We’re going to have to evacuate ourselves in five minutes–the mycelium is too thick. Evacuate at once.”  
Kirk tried to remember the Vulcan’s name. “Shuhgon!” “Shugon, we need to go now!” The Vulcan did not respond. He just kept babbling about how they hurt him. Not that Kirk really wanted to leave without knowing everybody on board was already off and safe. The thought sickened him. In fact, it gave him a stomach ache–the kind of stomach ache where he knew he could not go through with it. 

Shit. 

He hit the comm button again. “Status!”

“Waiting on five individuals. Evacuation zone personnel leaving now.”

“Who? Which five individuals?” He knew one of them was the Vulcan, and another was him. So that left three people unaccounted for possibly passed out somewhere in the hallways of the ship. If he knew who they were they’d be easier to find. 

“Cadet Kirk, Ensign Merryweather, Lieutenant Brown, Chief Science Officer Spock and First Officer Una.”

Kirk did not have a communicator. It was star fleet issue and he was not a crew member of the enterprise, so he grabbed the one on the Vulcan’s belt. Spock’s belt apparently–Kirk thought absently.  
He flipped it open to the ship-wide comm. channel. 

“Cadet Kirk. Hailing any persons not in the evacuation zone. Do you need assistance? over.”

There was a moment. And then the communicator beeped back. 

“Una here with Merryweather and Brown. No assistance required.” Una paused noting the communicator signature, and then, “Has Spock been incapacitated? Over.”

Spock was still babbling, just outside of hearing range to the communicator. 

“You could say so. Over.”

“Get him to evac immediately. Consider that an order cadet. Over”

“Yes, Ma’am! Over.”

Stomach ache gone, Kirk turned back to the babbling Vulcan. 

He tried again, “Spock?”

“They set the multi-verse on fire. Burning. Burning. Everything burning and death.”

It was time for a new tactic. 

He grabbed Spock’s wrist. One pair of eyes and two faces snapped onto him. 

“You can’t put me back. I don’t want to go back.” The tardigrade reared. 

Jim jumped, and raised his hands in surrender. 

“It’s okay. I’m not taking you back.” He kept his eyes on Spock. The man was not himself. He seemed to be the tardigrade. But he understood English and human body language and that’s what Kirk needed.  
“I’m not going to hurt you.” Kirk stared into the mournful soul of the tardigrade through the window of Spock’s eyes. 

He continued gently, “Someone hurt me once too.”

Spock had stopped babbling, so Kirk kept talking. 

“I was starving. There was not enough food. And they tried to kill us.”

“I’d never send someone back to that. Not ever.”

Kirk looked beseechingly into Spock's eyes. “Do you believe me?”

Spock, as the tardigrade, nodded. 

“Good.” Kirk said, “Spock and I need to go now.” He was speaking in the most hushed and relaxing tone he could manage. He assumed that no matter where the tardigrade’s intelligence and sentience factor sat, the best approach now was that of approaching a frightened animal. 

He gave a long gentle pause, “Will you let Spock go now?”


	2. Chapter 2

Spock nodded, but both the tardigrade and Spock moved forward. Spock spoke, “We can go anywhere.” It was not exactly what Kirk had hoped for.

“Okay. But Spock and I need to go to the evacuation zone.”

Spock made a face at him. He said, “We will go to the evacuation zone.”

The tardigrade and Spock stepped forward, and just when Kirk thought he’d be leading a giant sightless six-armed bear through the halls of the enterprise, the script was flipped on him once again: Spock reached out and grabbed him. Then they were not where they were anymore.

Kirk could see. He saw everywhere on the Enterprise at once: every Jeffrey tube, every conduit, the bridge, secondary control, the empty medical facilities, the abandoned science facilities, Acting-Captain Una fireman carrying a crewman through the halls as she and another made their way around tardigrades, and finally the evacuation zone where the last of the officers there were making their way into the pods.  
And then they were there in the evacuation zone. One of the officers screamed—short and high pitched.

Kirk could not say he blamed them. Oxygen content was getting low around here, and frankly he was pretty sure the sight of them was terrifying.

Spock made a disgusted face, and the tardigrade placed two of its paws over Spock’s ears.

Before Kirk could finish processing how surreal all of this was, Acting-Captain Una peeled around the corner phaser in hand with the lieutenant, and her unconscious charge.

Her eyes flicked from one person to another in the room checking for injuries, and then settled on Kirk, Spock and the tardigrade. She narrowed her eyes as if assessing whether or not the two of them were in danger. Or possibly--Kirk imagined humorously--engaged in an unconventional conga line.

“We’re fine.” Kirk supplied. “Well. I’m not sure, actually. I think Spock has been possessed by the tardigrade. But it does not mean any harm.”

Una made an expression. “We’ll deal with it later. Evacuate now.”

“Yes Ma’am!”

She turned her gaze on the straggling evacuation personnel and they unfroze, quickly getting back to boarding the last pods.

Una boarded her own pod with Ensign Merryweather, and Lietenant Brown. She turned back to Kirk. “You take that pod over there. It’s designed for large passengers. You should fit.”

If they did not, Kirk was pretty sure they could teleport or whatever they’d done before to the planet just fine. But Kirk kept it to himself.

They did fit, although it was an awkward negotiation to get Spock to let him go long enough to crawl in—or rather to let the tardigrade crawl in and carry Spock with them. Once inside it was crowded.

Kirk thought absently that it was too bad that there was not a shuttle available. There would have been plenty of space for the three of them on one of those. But all the shuttles had already been sent down with many more passengers.

So, it was a little snuggly. That was fine. The tardigrade at least seemed to find the dark soothing: Spock was humming.

Kirk made sure they were secure, and then not thirty seconds later, their pod jettisoned.

It was about then that it occurred to Kirk that maybe this had been a bad idea—at least for the tardigrade. They had shown up once the Mycellium had gotten too thick for human habitation, could it be that once they entered an atmosphere suitable for humans the tardigrade would die?

Kirk was a lot of things, but he was not a xeno-biologist and he did not have the first clue. What would it mean for Spock if something happened to the tardigrade?

Either way, they were rocketing towards the planet.

“Are you okay? We’re going down to that planet. Is the air okay for you?”

“Home is safe. We’re going home.”

Spock’s hands were still on him and Kirk braced himself for another transportation, but nothing happened. “Did that mean that this was the tardigrade home-world?”

Kirk wished there were windows in the pod. It was a long descent.

He did not say anything to the tardigrade though because the creature was calm again, and Kirk did not want to do anything to disturb that.

A half an hour later, the pod landed. Kirk unbuckled them, and opened the hatch. The lighting was dim—at least in the human visible range—but the mycelium grew here like plants, and they glowed. There were tardigrades everywhere. Some were as large as the one possessing Spock, and others were as small as softballs hovering like humming birds over the mycelium. It was beautiful.

On the other hand, the environment had been encroached upon by over 400 hundred mostly human aliens, a little more than half of whom were awake.

If this was first contact, it would probably look like an invasion.

But thankfully the tardigrades did not seem to be taking it that way. Kirk had a feeling that the creatures did not have any natural predators. None of them were reacting badly to the humans milling about at all.

Except for Spock’s tardigrade—whose first contact, if it’s earlier babbling meant anything, involved abduction. That tardigrade had quickly gone from calm to panic.

“What are they doing here! They can’t be trusted! The younglings!”

Kirk took a gamble. The tardigrade trusted him. It seemed to have known that he was telling the truth before—picking it up perhaps telepathically. Maybe he could rely on that again.

“I wont let them take any of your kind. Trust me. No one is going to get hurt here.”

The tardigrade nuzzled his face with its snout, as Spock spoke, “I trust you.”

Kirk believed it. He did not take that kind of trust lightly. The creature had been hurt before, and if it was deigning to trust him now, he could not let it down.

Kirk scanned the crowd. They were keeping to themselves mostly. Star Fleet training was good, and anybody here should know better than to antagonize the native creatures.

Kirk figured he needed to consult with the brass. The people in charge could keep everyone in line, and would be the ones he needed on his side.

If his command training was worth anything, Kirk suspected that the Captain or Acting Captain would be consulting with the chiefs of staff. Science, medical and engineering would be working on ways to make the ship habitable again or plan their escape. Security and sciences would also be doing a threat assessment on the native environment. Kirk needed to find that meeting.

As luck, or perhaps logic, would have it, that meeting found him.

Una marched over to him having spotted him in the crowd. In tow behind her were several high-ranking officers: the chief of engineering—Lieutenant Commander Yee—whom he recognized, the chief medical officer, a lieutenant from security, and lieutenant Brown from Sciences.

She gave Spock an evaluative look, lingering on the way the man was in physical contact with the tardigrade and Kirk. She flicked her eyes to Kirk.

“Report.”

Kirk looked over at Spock silently for a moment, waiting for the Vulcan to miraculously regain consciousness.

“I said report, Cadet.”

“Spock does not seem to be in control of himself. It’s like he’s possessed.”

“As you’ve said. How did this happen?”

“I’m not sure. I was on evacuation detail Ma’am when these tardigrade creatures appeared suddenly in the corridors. I believe they teleported Ma’am.”

“Teleported!” interjected the chief engineer, shooting a pointed look at the Acting Captain.

“Yes.” Kirk supplied. “I was in the corridor with an ensign, and they became startled by the creatures, and they shot one—this one.” Kirk gestured towards the tardigrade.

Una narrowed her eyes, and the security officer flicked her eyes about the natives.

“It reared back and it was going to charge but Spock came out of nowhere and touched its face and it stopped.”

“A mind meld.” Una said.

“Thank god for the rest of us.” Added the chief medical officer. “It’s good to know we aren’t in danger of being mind wiped.”

Kirk frowned, not approving of the doctor’s attitude. Moving on from the tasteless comment, Kirk said, “I was not aware that Vulcans could meld with non-Vulcans.”

“They can. But it’s dangerous. More dangerous than a regular meld—and shit’s dangerous enough as it is.” The doctor explained.

“Evidently.” Una said coldly.

“When Spock melded with it,” Kirk added before he could be dismissed, “he started talking a lot. But he was not acting like a Vulcan, and he kept talking about how ‘the humans had hurt him’. He talked about being starved and tortured. He mentioned a Michael.”

There was an undeniable look of recognition on Una’s face at the name, and the chief engineer glanced at Una in such a way that Kirk knew Yee knew what he was talking about. 

“Thank you, Cadet. Dismissed.” She turned from him towards the CMO “Get whoever you can spare to keep an eye on Spock. See if they can break the connection safely. And Consult with Brown with sciences on the atmosphere problem. See if we can build a mask the mycelium does not permeate through. Or clear the cloud. Get creative.”

She turned to Yee, “I want options from engineering. Stasis chambers. Remote Piloting the Enterprise. Beaming through the interference. You name it.”

Finally, to the security officer she said, “Make sure your personnel know that a single phaser burst is not strong enough to take one of these things down. And that no one is to shoot them—we’re surrounded and defenseless—at least for now.”

“Report back to me in an hour. Dismissed.”

Kirk stayed put, even as the others darted away to comply with Una’s orders. “Ma’am. Spock—the tardigrade—said that this planet is home. Recommend this situation be treated through a first contact lens.”

“Thank you, Cadet. I’ll keep it under advisement.”

“I mean—I promised the tardigrade that nothing bad would be done to it or the others.”

She glanced back and forth between him and the tardigrade. “Kid. I’m not planning on hurting anything here. But word of advice, don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

She marched off.

Kirk watched her go feeling both mollified and useless.

A medical officer arrived. She was young. She introduced herself, “Nurse Mwangi. Chausiku Mwangi”

“Cadet Kirk. James Kirk.”


End file.
